local12.com website review

Not measured in this review.

• Fails Core Web Vitals for real visitors

  Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on your site (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

• Real-user INP: 222 ms

  222 ms

  Real visitors wait 222 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

• Largest content (LCP) held steady for real visitors

  +4%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.2 s to 1.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Page weight: 3.5 MB

  3.5 MB

  Your homepage downloads 3.5 MB on a phone, 267 KiB of it images (8%). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

• About 1.0 g of CO₂ per visit

  0.98 g

  By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.98 g of CO₂e: 117.6 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

• 20 tap targets too small

  20 tap targets are too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

  Elements (3)

• 3 text elements with low contrast

  3 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

  Elements (3)

• All page content should be contained by landmarks (7 elements)

  All page content should be contained by landmarks: 7 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (3)

• Page should contain a level-one heading (1 element)

  Page should contain a level-one heading: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (1)

• 1 form field without a label

  1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

  View source

• No H1 headline

  There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

• No structured data

  No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

• Meta description is long (977 characters)

  Your meta description is 977 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

  View source

• 129 internal links, 24 external

  The homepage links to 129 pages on local12.com and 24 external pages.

• robots.txt blocks 1 AI answer engine crawler

  1 of 6

  Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT (ChatGPT-User). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

• No Organization structured data

  There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

• No llms.txt

  There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

• Opted out of AI training for 5 crawlers

  robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended and CCBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers.

• 7 pages share a meta description

  /weather, /news/investigates, /sports, /money, /watch and /sports/bengals/bengals-hold-off-dolphins-for-31-24-victory-improve-to-3-2 and 1 other use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

• 4 pages without an H1

  /weather, /news/investigates, /sports and /money have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

• 2 pages with very little text

  /sports/bengals/bengals-hold-off-dolphins-for-31-24-victory-improve-to-3-2 and /news/local/photos-blink-2025-lights-up-cincinnati-nky-as-festival-begins have under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

• 15 internal pages checked

  We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 113 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

• 4 JavaScript errors while loading

  4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Manifest: Line: 1, column: 1, Syntax error.”.

• No call to action on the first screen

  On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

• Thin social proof

  Social proof on the homepage: 2 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

• No direct contact details

  No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

• No risk reducer

  No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

• About 1,053 words of copy

  The homepage carries about 1,053 words of visible text.

• Urgency cues

  The page uses urgency cues (a countdown or limited-time wording).

• 8 trackers load before any consent

  8

  Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Comscore, Criteo, Google Ads and Google Analytics and 3 mores (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (Ketch) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

• 21 cookies set on arrival

  21

  Opening the homepage sets 21 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

• 77 other companies contacted

  Loading the homepage contacts 77 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.